What War?

With Red China trumpeting the alleged withdrawal of its invading armies, a deadly apathy settled over India last week. The government desperately needed gold to pay for war purchases, but few patriots were willing to turn in their hoards, even on the attractive official terms for payment. Civil defense measures were a joke, slit trenches being dug in New Delhi were both too shallow and too narrow, and a scandal boiled up over the substandard cement used in air raid shelters. So hard up was the government for arms that it asked India's maharajahs to turn over their tiger-hunting guns to defenseless villagers on the northern frontier. Perhaps to stiffen his resolve, a newspaper editor sent Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru a submachine gun as a gift.

Clinging to the idea that if Russia aids India, it will not supply China, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru played up the Soviet promise to send MIG jet fighters to the Indian air force. When Britain's Commonwealth Secretary Duncan Sandys suggested in London that chances of delivery seemed slim, Nehru retorted tartly that he had "authoritative information" that the MIGs would be Delivered.

In any case, Nehru knew roughly what he wanted from the U.S. in military aid. His shopping list had Pentagon eyes popping: a whopping $1 billion worth of weapons and equipment for 1963 alone. India's entire national budget for fiscal 1963 is less than $3 billion.

The question was: would Nehru fight with or without aid? Army leaders seemed to have no idea where the Chinese lines were, or even whether the Reds were really withdrawing. Indian patrolling apparently had been stopped, and even aerial reconnaissance ruled out, for fear of Chinese retaliation. And this despite the fact that China had violated its "ceasefire" at least once: a Red patrol opened up on an Indian outpost, killing three soldiers and wounding four more.

Seeking first-hand facts, the Prime Minister flew to the front to consult his officers and console the wounded troops. In New Delhi the External Affairs Ministry announced the harshest action of the week against Red China: the shutdown of the Indian consulates in Shanghai and Lhasa. This did not affect India's Peking embassy, which, aggression or no aggression, was doing business as usual. At week's end. some of its business was revealed: under orders from Nehru, Indian diplomats in Peking were carrying on discreet preliminary peace talks with China.

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